Qualla: Baturyn Museum of Archeology

Baturyn Museum of Archeology: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerii Sorokin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Among the artifacts in the Baturyn Museum of Archeology there is a small copper plate, blackened by fire, that once was an icon of the Mother of God with the Infant Christ. The gilding survives in patches, the work of master craftsmen from the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra in the late seventeenth century. Archaeologists found it lying in the grave of an elderly woman with a broken skull. The icon and its keeper were buried together on November 13, 1708, the day Tsar Peter the Great's commander Aleksandr Menshikov destroyed the Hetman's capital. Most of what this museum exhibits is older or younger than that date. But every artifact in every case orbits around it.

Image: Valerii Sorokin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Baturyn Museum of Archeology: A House Older Than the Museum

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerii Sorokin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The museum opened on January 22, 2009, the Day of the Unification of Ukraine, with President Viktor Yushchenko cutting the ribbon. It occupies a brick parish school built in 1904 next to the Resurrection Church, which holds the tomb of Hetman Kyrylo Razumovsky, the last Cossack h...

Image: Valerii Sorokin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Baturyn Museum of Archeology: Mammoth Bones to Cossack Boots

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Demmarcos, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first hall, called Ancient Baturyn, holds the bones of mammoths and other animals that lived here ten thousand years ago. Stone tools from the Neolithic share cases with jewelry from Kyivan Rus, the medieval Slavic civilization that gave this region its first script and its f...

Image: Demmarcos | CC BY-SA 4.0

Baturyn Museum of Archeology: The Hetman's Capital

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerii Sorokin, CC BY-SA 3.0. From 1669 to 1708, Baturyn was the residence of the Hetmans of the Zaporizhian Host, the elected leaders of the semi-autonomous Cossack state called the Hetmanate. Three hetmans ruled from here: Demyan Mnohohrishny, Ivan Samoilovich, and Ivan Mazepa, the most famous and most cont...

Image: Valerii Sorokin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Baturyn Museum of Archeology: November 13, 1708

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerii Sorokin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Aleksandr Menshikov reached Baturyn with Russian troops and orders to make an example. The town was sacked and burned. Estimates of the dead vary; the most cited figure is around 14,000 men, women, and children. The burnt icon in the museum is one fragment of evidence; another is...

Image: Valerii Sorokin | CC BY-SA 3.0